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Briefing.com Summary:
*Earnings results from blue chip companies helped drive a turn in the equity futures market.
*Mega-cap stocks are mixed, which has been a restraint on the equity futures market.
*Q3 earnings have been mostly better than expected, while the guidance in general has been reassuring.
The equity futures had a negative tilt earlier, but that disposition has improved with the release of earnings results from several blue chip companies.
Currently, the S&P 500 futures are flat and are trading in line with fair value, the Nasdaq 100 futures are down seven points and are trading slightly below fair value, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures are down nine points and are trading in line with fair value.
General Motors (GM), 3M (MMM), GE Aerospace (GE), Coca-Cola (KO), Philip Morris Intl. (PM), Northrop Grumman (NOC), Elevance Health (ELV), Halliburton (HAL), Lockheed Martin (LMT), and RTX Corp (RTX) all posted their quarterly results, and they have one thing in common despite operating across different industries: they all topped consensus EPS estimates.
The reactions have been mostly positive, although LMT and PM are trading lower after their reports.
The market's emphasis thus far, however, has been on the good and not the bad, much like it has been since the April lows. Things would look better, but the mega-cap stocks are trading in mixed fashion ahead of the open.
They had their time in the sun yesterday, though, basking in Apple's (AAPL) record-high glow. They are taking a little time to cool down, ceding their spot in the sun to other stocks.
That might translate into some outperformance (early on anyway) for the value factor and equal-weighted indices, yet this market has found it very hard to detach for too long from its mega-cap security blanket, so we'll see how the day unfolds.
The overarching point this morning is that the earnings news for the September quarter continues to be better than expected, and, most importantly, the guidance has been generally reassuring. The fact that the market isn't as expressive about those points this morning as one might expect is due mostly to that reality having been priced in to a large degree already.
The other weighty fact of the matter is that the major indices will struggle to reflect that understanding if the mega-cap stocks are in a cool-down phase.
Separately, the U.S. government remains in a mostly frozen state, with the shutdown on day 21 now and still no sign of an imminent agreement to get it reopened.
